Conversations

I think that conversation is such an important part of a classroom.  I love it when our room is filled with conversation.  During read aloud we will constantly have students turn and talk about the book we are reading.  I think these conversations help with comprehension.  Students can bounce ideas off other students, they can hear different view points, or they can allow students to confirm an idea they have about the book.

One of my favorite ways to spark a conversation is with a silent conversation.  We have used these silent conversations a few times before and I have even blogged about using them before.  The idea of a silent conversation is simple...students have a conversation on paper.  One student writes an idea onto a piece of paper.  That piece of paper gets passed around the circle with other pieces of paper.  Students think about what other students have written and then add their thinking to the pages.

I think these silent conversations really allow some reluctant students to enter into a conversation.  I also love how the silent conversation allows students to disagree with others or even with me.  Too often I think students (while at school) are reluctant to disagree.  During our silent conversations students disagree in such a respectful way.  I hope the more we practice these silent conversations the more we will see these skills translate into our other types of conversation.

The silent conversation we had today centered around Hercules.  Some of the conversations revolved around what was Hercules hardest labor, is Hercules a hero, can heroes do bad things, and why does Hercules keep stealing even though he knows it is wrong.  It was so much fun to see how these different ideas forced students to share what they had learned from their reading and then add their own thinking to that text.

Today before school even started I got to have a great conversation about the book Notebook Know How by Aimee Buckner.

This is a book that a few of us Language Arts teachers have got together to read and discuss.  Today our discussion centered around the idea of helping students find ideas in their writer's notebooks and then get those ideas ready to draft.  It was great to hear what different teachers do to help their students think about how the ideas they have been creating in their notebook could be turned into projects.   

I hope you are all staying warm and having a great start to your week.